St. Francis Biography

[Era Might]

I'm reading a (recent) biography of St. Francis, actually written by a Dominican priest, but it's a scholarly biography trying to separate fact from legend. The first half of the book is a biography, and the second half takes a critical look at all the source materials and what can and can't be supported from evidence. It's a very human look at St. Francis.

Amazon.com: Francis of Assisi - A New Biography

I haven't read other St. Francis biographies so I didn't come to this with any preconceived notions, just wanted to give a few thoughts and see if anyone had any of their own:

• He discusses Francis as a young man going off to a battle and considers that Francis may have been a scarred veteran with something akin to PTSD, which precipitated his crisis and later conversion.
• To me, one of the central questions that St. Francis brings up is what does it mean to have a conversion. Not necessarily a religious conversion, but to pass from one mode of living to another, to see the world in an entirely new way and to live in a different reality from what you previously experienced. The author sort of sees Francis' experience with lepers as the illustration of how things changed for him. Francis was a happy and social young man, he loved fine clothes, friends, etc., until he came back from battle and had his personal crisis. He had an deep fear of ugliness, and the lepers embodied that, but his change of life did not change his love for beauty, but it changed what he saw as beautiful, so that suddenly the lepers and the suffering Christ were the models of beauty through which he saw everything else.
• The great human theme of St. Francis was vocation. I'm sure there are many saints who would have "vocation" stories of finding a way in the world, but I think St. Francis may have been very unique in this respect. His vocation was very deeply about a personality, not just a place or way in life. Vocation became not just a way of living in the world, but what the world was changed for him. Things like poverty, humility, joy, etc. were not just virtues in the midst of reality, but the "materials" by which his reality was made. This is why he could follow it naively, literally, because he was not offering the world a "spirituality" but seeing the world as only he could see it through his eyes. That made it difficult when he attracted followers, because he was just following the course of his personality, how could he "pass it on" to somebody else? Living as St. Francis lived was not about adopting a way of life, but rather the way of life was St. Francis, in much the same way we can speak of Christ as "the Way." I can't think of any other Saints who were like this in the way St. Francis was, and this was true even in his own time, the church wasn't really sure what to make of him.
• And, finally, that comes to the institutionalization of St. Francis, how to create a way of life for all the followers who never sought nor expected, who just came to him after his life changed. He insisted that, while priests could join him, those who entered the brotherhood should not try to learn to read or become priests after the fact, that they should just remain what they were when they entered. I think that gets back to the main point about the "Franciscan" way as not a spirituality or an order, but a new reality, a world that only exists in the personality of Francis, where the material of this world (power, status, planning, authority) are not worked around but cease to even be seen, all that is seen is to be the least and servant of all and to live without care for tomorrow, without guile, without street smarts, without possessions to maintain or a plan to achieve, but simply living the primitive life of the Gospels. I'm not really familiar with the rest of Franciscan history, so I would be fascinated to know how the personality of Francis is been lost and found again by his followers. Even though Franciscans are an order, it seems that to be a "Franciscan" is not really to be a "member of an order" in a usual sense, though that became part of it (and it wasn't easy for Francis to institutionalize his way of life, but he kind of had to after his followers grew so big).

[Era Might]

Just another point about vocation, because it has really struck me while reading this. I don't think our usual sense of "vocation" is really vocation in its deepest sense. Even when we speak of a specific role, such as priest or mother or father, those are roles, they do not require personality, they are more about assuming the personality of those roles. And this is where I think St. Francis differs, he had no "role" as such, but he had vocation in its deepest sense, which is personality. One of the obvious questions I ask myself, not just about St. Francis but about people like him, who follow such a radical path, is how do they bear the more trying aspects of it (e.g., celibacy, fame, etc.). And I think they can bear them because they are not assuming a role, a vocation. Celibacy becomes, not an heroic sacrifice, but an entirely giving oneself over to the new vision of life. One can be celibate while living a role, and I think in this case, celibacy must be very hard, and I think it is probably like this for most people who assume a vocation as a role more than a transformation of personality. Same with marriage, it is a sort of role that one conforms to without the dynamic transformation of a true vocation, and maybe that is why it is so hard to be faithful (among other reasons) or to remain together. I don't think the conventional view of vocation is deeply satisfying, though it can be moderately satisfying enough to live a life.

[dUSt]

Cool. Adding to my wishlist.

[franciscanheart]

I've read a couple. Adding to my list.